Obituary

Michael Gearin-Tosh

An inspiring teacher of English literature at St Catherine's College, Oxford, for almost four decades, Michael Gearin-Tosh, who has died aged 65, also became a life-enhancing figure to a much wider public. Sadly, in 1994, he was diagnosed with myeloma, an acute form of bone marrow cancer. He refused to allow this to dampen his spirits or affect his many activities, and though the doctors gave him less than a year to live, he survived triumphantly for more than 10.

Rejecting the option of chemotherapy, Michael wrote a remarkable book about his unconventional self-treatment, entitled Living Proof: A Medical Mutiny, and published in 2002. The humour and high spirits of his individual approach to his illness have certainly given comfort and consolation, as well as hope and amusement, to fellow-sufferers. In the event, his death was caused by an unrelated blood infection.

Michael was born in Nambour, Queensland, and remained an Australian citizen all his life. His father, a surgeon, died when Michael was very young, and he went, with his mother, to Scotland to pursue his education. At Aberdeen grammar school and Dundee high school, he excelled in a variety of subjects, for a long time staying uncertain whether to study botany, English or the classics at university level.

He won an open scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1957, but had to postpone it, on account of his youth, until 1959, meanwhile studying philosophy at St Andrews University. He won the chancellor's English essay prize in the year of his finals, and two decades later, in 1983, added to his achieve- ments by winning the university prize for "a poem on a sacred subject", engagingly entitled The Drunkenness Of Noah.

After graduating, he became a junior lecturer at Magdalen College, Oxford, and, in 1965, a research fellow at St Catherine's. For a while, he assisted Rachel Trickett, later principal of St Hugh's College, in her research, and this began a warm and enduring friendship that lasted till her death in 1999. Together, they resurrected the reputation of the poet John Oldham and his satires against the Jesuits.

Michael's own research interests at this time included William Collins and the English Augustans, Dryden, Pope and Swift. Towards the end of his life, he was working on what would have been a superb edition of Marvell had he lived to complete it.

As a young man, he had greatly impressed Dennis Horgan, his senior colleague in English at St Catherine's, who said that he possessed "intellectual strength combined with the most refined sensibility - a mind one only comes across very rarely". He was elected a tutorial fellow of St Catherine's in 1971, and served as librarian and, for a while, as domestic bursar, greatly improving the quality of college food.

From 1988 to 1990, he was vice-master of the college. He took a welfare role in acting as the university assessor (1988-89), and played a large part in the running of the English faculty.

Theatre was one of Mich- ael's greatest interests. Writing and directing absorbed him, in opera as well as plays. His enthusiasm inspired others, and led to the asso-ciation of St Catherine's with the Cameron Mackintosh chair of contemporary theatre, whose visiting holders have included Peter Shaffer, Arthur Miller, Richard Eyre, Alan Ayckbourn, Stephen Sondheim, Diana Rigg and Patrick Marber. He also helped to establish an award which has since enabled many St Catherine's students to train with London Weekend Television.

Michael picked and cherished his college students with great care, and was an outstanding tutor. Many of his students became what his friend Iris Murdoch described as "pals for life". Another great friend, Professor Lord David Cecil, used to say that Michael had the gift of showing how to get the best out of the university and out of life, without taking either of them too seriously.

He is survived by his partner, Arkadiusz Weremczuk.

· Michael Brian Gearin-Tosh, academic and writer, born January 16 1940; died July 29 2005